Sherman’s 1st Day in Congress Is ‘Daunting’

WASHINGTON —  Rep. Brad Sherman pondered the question. “Everyone thinks I should be on cloud nine,” he said after becoming an official member of the House of Representatives on Tuesday. “But this is kind of daunting.”

The seriousness seemed out of place for this self-described “recovering nerd,” the State Board of Equalization Democrat who cruised to a surprisingly easy victory in November to take over former Rep. Anthony C. Beilenson’s 24th Congressional District seat.

Given little chance against the better-known, better-financed Republican, Richard P. Sybert, Sherman befuddled the political prognosticators with his victory.

“I was a lot more certain than anyone else,” Sherman recalled. “I thought ’96 was a much better year to run than ’94. My friends said, ‘How are you going to get out the vote?’ I told them I’d arranged for a presidential election to stir up interest.”

Sherman, munching on a sandwich behind an uncluttered desk, seemed to be heading back to his self-deprecating comfort zone.

“I was never supposed to be the charismatic leader,” he said with a sheepish smile in his sunny but stark Washington office.

“I was supposed to be the guy behind the guy who was the charismatic leader--the fund-raiser or the strategist.”

Maybe he did not fit the classic profile of a politician in his youth. But Sherman showed his interest early on. At age 7, he helped stuff envelopes for a Monterey Park city councilman who was fighting for an open-housing law.

“Even at that age, I could understand that everyone should have an equal opportunity for housing,” Sherman said.

The next year, he performed similar mailing chores for Rep. George Brown Jr., the San Bernardino Democrat who defied the pundits and won his 17th term in November.

“Now it is my great honor to serve in Congress with him,” Sherman said.

So here he sits, signature rumpled suit and all, accepting Vice President Al Gore’s congratulations at the Library of Congress, huddling with anxious aides, drumming up as much charisma as he could muster on his swearing-in day.

“It’s a lot like college graduation. You work hard to get there, but you pretty much know what’s going to happen. The hard work is all ahead.”

Sherman, whose term on the state tax board ended Jan. 2, has not had much time to find a place to live.

For now, Sherman, who is single, is staying in the Capitol Hilton for a few nights, along with some family members and girlfriend Patty Boyle, a resource specialist for the Lawndale School District.

“A travel agent friend of mine got us a $79-a-night rate,” Sherman said approvingly. But he will soon improve on that. “My mother’s second cousin has a nice guest room.”

Nor has he devoted any time to sprucing up his office. A couple of drab prints adorn the walls of his corner suite in the Longworth Office Building. But the bookshelves hold nothing but a battered dictionary and some other stray reference works.

But in terms of space and location, Sherman’s office is palatial.

Sherman won the freshman lottery and had his pick of the better offices. In the normal course of events, first-term members find themselves in the dingiest, darkest, least delightful quarters. As with everything else in Washington, one must accrue power--and good office space--through seniority.

Proudly showing off his sunny, relatively spacious quarters, Sherman asks, “You wouldn’t know this was a freshman’s office, would you?

“It may not have a Capitol view,” Sherman noted as he went to look out the window, “but it doesn’t look over a parking lot.”

“I hate it when he calls himself a recovering nerd,” said Lane Sherman, his beaming mother. “I always knew he would be a great officeholder, but I never thought he would be a great candidate.

“He was quite serious as a youngster,” his mother recalled. “Then he started reading MAD magazine and telling political jokes. He and his friends would kid around with this intellectual humor. He’s not a raconteur or a joke teller, but he has a lot of one-liners.”

He likes to say that he worked himself up to be average, his mother said.

But his girlfriend knows better.

“He’s an incredibly hard worker,” Boyle said. “He wants everything to go well, and I wasn’t particularly surprised when he said he was running for Congress. If it wasn’t this, it would be something else.”

But let the 42-year-old CPA and Harvard Law School graduate put his public life in typically self-deprecating perspective.

“After practicing law, my friends said I could even lower my public esteem by running for the Board of Equalization. Then I could be a politician and a tax collector at the same time. Then Tony Beilenson said I could be in a big room presided over by Newt Gingrich and lower it even further.

“I hope you know I’m being facetious,” Sherman added.